Day 2

We're just finishing up Day 2 with Jill. It's going fairly well. When we're just hanging out playing in the room things are great! She plays well with us or alone. We're having a little trouble with sleeping and using the toilet. I guess that's pretty typical for three though. Here's an outline of how today went...Jill woke up during the night at 1am (patted her back to get her back to sleep pretty quickly) then again at 4am (patted her back, but much longer to get her back to sleep again) then was up for good at 5:30 (after patting her back from 5am to 5:30). We watched Blues Clues: Blues Big Musical until 6:30, then Dada got up and played toys with her and I dozed off until 7:30 when we all got dressed and ready for breakfast. We went down the hall to the hotel restuarant for breakfast where they had fried eggs (They've finally learned that I like my yolks well done!, bread, butter, strawberry jam, banana yogurt, pineapple juice, cheddar cheese, some meat that looked like raw bacon, (but Wade tried it and said it was just smoked ham with a lot of fat still on it), pickles, and coffee. Jill ate about a fourth of one of my egg whites, a piece of bread, a half a piece of cheese, an entire banana yogurt, and almost the whole pineapple juice box. She said 'nyet' to the pickles and ham, and sat nicely waiting for the food. She also sat nicely while eating. What we will have to work on is the acutal eating. She 'chews' with her mouth way open and pretty much sounds like a pig. It's quite disgusting. We've learned the word 'closed' in Russian and have even tried holding her lips closed while she 'chews' to help her understand we'd like her to chew with her mouth closed. The problem is that the word for closed is zat-KRY-ta and the word for open is at-KRY-ta. They sound so similar that she probably doesn't know which one we're saying; whenever we say zat-KRY-ta she opens her mouth wider that I thought humanly possible and makes even more chewing noise than before!!! If you noticed that I put the word 'chews' in quotation marks, I did that for a reason. She doesn't really chew with her teeth. She smooshes the food between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It takes forever! Anyway, after breakfast we went back in the room and played some more, then put her on the potty. She did not go even once yesterday, despite the fact that we put her on the toilet about four times. But, she did wake up with a wet pull up this morning. So, no luck on the toilet, then we went for a walk. We didn't put her in the stroller since we were just going around the corner to the small grocery store and we wouldn't have to cross any streets. She walked nicely holing hands with both Wade and me. All we needed was bread for sandwiches for lunch, so it didn't take us long. When we got back they were still cleaning our room, so we left again and went to the open market where we bought a couple of tomatoes and some strawberries. When we got back they were finished with the room and we fixed ourselves some lunch. She didn't eat as much today as yesterday, maybe because she had had a bigger breakfast today than she had had yesterday. She ate a little ham, a little cheese, a piece of bread and tried the strawberries three times, spitting them out each time. I think that she's never had strawberries before, as they mentioned that they don't like giving the children red fruits or vegetables. I was not making her try them, they were just on her plate. So, I was surprised that every once in awhile she would poke one with her fork (Something else we had to teach her; I think they only used spoons in the orphanage because she just tries to scoop everything and then it falls off the fork!), smell it, (She smells everything before eating it,even if it's a piece of the exact same thing she just took a bite of!)try it, spit it out and go on to something else. Then awhile later she'd poke another one, smell it, try it, and spit it out! So she's open to trying new foods and even trying them multiple times. You never know, maybe tomorrow she'll like them! After lunch we tried the toilet again. She sat there at least five minutes-nothing again, so-time for a nap. She SCREAMED! Even more than she screamed at naptime yesterday. This surprised me because she didn't even cry at bedtime yesterday. Maybe she just doesn't like naps. Anyway, SCREAMED, SCREAMED, STOOD UP, SHOOK THE CRIB (Which is on slight rockers and therefore we thought she was going to tip it over!)We tried to calm her, but nothing worked, she kept getting up, screaming and shaking the crib, then-she peed all over her pillow (that she was standing on). The only good thing about this is that it didn't get on the sheets. We put her on the potty while I washed the pillow, pillowcase and her blanket (it got on the blanket a little bit) and she cried the whole time. Then, we put a pull up on her and put her back in bed. She cried, but didn't scream like before and eventually we patted her back enough for her to fall asleep. She was asleep by 1:15 and slept until 3:00! I slept the majority of this time too! At three we tried the toilet again, you guessed it-no luck. We gave her a banana for snack and tried to practice the 'chew with your mouth closed' thing. Then played until 4 when we called home! After talking to my parents and the boys for about 20 minutes, we went for a long, long walk to La Vanille (The French Restaurant). For this one she rode in the stroller. I ordered a Ceasar salad of which Jill ate about two lettuce leaves of and a bunch of croutons, Wade and I both ordered chicken sandwiches of which Jill ate about 1/3 of my bread and hard boiled eggs, but minimal chicken and cheese, and NONE of that lettuce, and Wade and I both ordered the fruit salad of which I picked out all of the apples for Jill and she ate them all! A pretty well rounded meal for her! She is very good at drinking out of a glass. If you give her a plastic cup, though, she squeezes it while drinking, thus spilling it! So, we have to use a real glass. Another weird thing we can't figure out is when she doesn't want to drink any more, she dumps the rest of her drink all over her plate!!! This happened twice yesterday, and now we can see it coming and grab the glass and/or move the plate. Weird! When we tried to put her in the stroller for the walk back, she didn't want in; she wanted to hold my hand and walk! She walked at least a half mile when she started to try to let go of my hand, so we put her in the stroller. She DID NOT want to be in the stroller. She got used to it though, (even without sucking her thumb!) and we kept her in it until we came upon a park-like area. We got her out to walk around, but she freaked out when we put her on the grass! She settled down after we walked a few feet over to a pathway where you could see some water. There was a parkbench there too that we sat on for awhile. Then, we began walking towards the hotel again, Jill holding my hand and Wade pushing the stroller. She walked the rest of the way! It was probably about another 1/2 mile. Wade just can't believe she walked a mile!!! We played with blocks for about 1/2 hour after returning to the hotel and then I told her (in Russian) that it was time to take a bath. She put those blocks away so quickly! She ran to the bathroom! She remembered how much she LOVED that bath yesterday! Before we put her in the tub we wanted her to go potty; surely she had to go by now; she hadn't gone since 12:30! It had been 6 and a half hours! She sat and cried, and cried, and sat, and cried, etc. In the meantime, the bath filled up with water, so we took her off the toilet, put her in the bath and then...she looked down, and-THE WATER STARTED TURNING YELLOW!!! I swooped her out of the tub and plopped her back on the toilet. I dried her off as she sat there and cried, and screamed, and cried "NE KEKE" (No potty, perhaps???). After ten minutes of not going, we took her off, put a pull-up on her, brushed her teeth (which by the way she hates), put her nightgown on, and told her it was time for sleep. (By the way, while she was sitting on the potty, we drained to tub---you pee in the tub, you don't get a bath.) She of course didn't want to sleep. We said, sleep(spat) or potty (pisat)? When we put her in the crib and she cried. We took her out and led her to the potty, when she cried there we walked her back to the crib, and again said, 'spat' or 'pisat'? and she said "Spat!". So, into the bed she went; she would rather sleep than go potty! She cried some, but I patted her back and she settled down. It was a little early for bed since we skipped the bath, and so it took her a little longer than last night to fall asleep. But, she's alseep now, and we'll try the potty thing again tomorrow! One thing that is going very well is the breaking of the thumb sucking during the day habit! She did it A LOT yesterday and we would take it out of her mouth. Today, she hardly did it at all. On the walk to the restaurant (about a 1/2 hour to 45 min. walk with the stroller) she only did it twice; once about 5 min. into the walk, then again about 5 minutes later, then not again at all until bed! Wow!